DeepSummary
The transcript is a discussion about the concept of agency from various perspectives, including the free energy principle, evolution, intelligence, and the role of language and culture. The participants explore the idea of agency as an emergent property arising from the interactions of multiple agents at different levels, and how it relates to intelligence, consciousness, and the blurring of boundaries between the physical and information worlds.
The conversation delves into topics such as the distinction between pure and embodied intelligence, the challenges of defining and measuring intelligence, the notion of subjective experience and phenomenology, and the potential impact of advanced AI systems on society. The participants also discuss the concept of agency in the context of language and culture, and how they might be considered as superorganisms with their own form of agency.
Additionally, the participants explore the idea of agency as a distributed phenomenon, questioning whether it can be localized to a specific locus or whether it is diffused throughout the dynamics of a system. They also touch upon the potential implications of advanced AI systems for trust, communication, and the blurring of boundaries between physical and virtual realities.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- Agency is viewed as an emergent property arising from the interactions of multiple agents at different levels, rather than being localized to a single entity.
- The concept of agency is closely tied to the free energy principle and the notion of biotic self-organization, with agency being a manifestation of the generalized synchronization of chaos.
- Intelligence and agency are not necessarily confined to human agents, and the participants explore the idea of language and culture as superorganisms with their own form of agency.
- The discussion touches upon the potential impact of advanced AI systems on society, including the blurring of boundaries between physical and virtual realities, and the implications for trust and communication.
- The notion of subjective experience and phenomenology is explored, with participants discussing the potential for machines to have a subjective experience, even if it is an illusion.
- The challenges of defining and measuring intelligence are discussed, with perspectives ranging from pure intelligence to embodied and physically situated intelligence.
- The idea of agency as a distributed phenomenon is explored, questioning whether it can be localized to a specific locus or whether it is diffused throughout the dynamics of a system.
- The conversation highlights the limitations of our understanding and the need for new frameworks and perspectives to comprehend the complex nature of agency, intelligence, and the emergence of phenomena at different scales.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “If you want to articulate it in a way that somebody dealing with either deterministic or chaotic, stochastic, chaotic systems, then I think what you're describing is exactly the generalized synchronization of chaos that characterizes biotic self organization, that will entail the kind of agency or will be necessary to manifest or evince the kind of.“ by Karl Friston
- “So if you're saying that the superorganism is just drawing a Markov blanket around a particular culture or society or population or ensemble, not set of cons, specifics I think you made a very clear point before that you cannot get a joint free energy minima just by looking at one kind of species. It has to be an ecosystem that necessarily has all sorts, even at one given scale, sorts of different kinds of phenotypes within it.“ by Nicole Rocha
- “I agree with him that it is an illusion, and so I think we could be convinced that it does. And so ultimately, if we treat it like it does, then in our experience, it does have a subjective experience.“ by Riddhi J. Pitliya
Entities
Concept
Person
Company
Book
Episode Information
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
1/7/24
Watch behind the scenes, get early access and join the private Discord by supporting us on Patreon:
https://patreon.com/mlst (public discord)
https://discord.gg/aNPkGUQtc5
https://twitter.com/MLStreetTalk
DOES AI HAVE AGENCY? With Professor. Karl Friston and Riddhi J. Pitliya
Agency in the context of cognitive science, particularly when considering the free energy principle, extends beyond just human decision-making and autonomy. It encompasses a broader understanding of how all living systems, including non-human entities, interact with their environment to maintain their existence by minimising sensory surprise.
According to the free energy principle, living organisms strive to minimize the difference between their predicted states and the actual sensory inputs they receive. This principle suggests that agency arises as a natural consequence of this process, particularly when organisms appear to plan ahead many steps in the future.
Riddhi J. Pitliya is based in the computational psychopathology lab doing her Ph.D at the University of Oxford and works with Professor Karl Friston at VERSES.
https://twitter.com/RiddhiJP
References:
THE FREE ENERGY PRINCIPLE—A PRECIS [Ramstead]
https://www.dialecticalsystems.eu/contributions/the-free-energy-principle-a-precis/
Active Inference: The Free Energy Principle in Mind, Brain, and Behavior [Thomas Parr, Giovanni Pezzulo, Karl J. Friston]
https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5299/Active-InferenceThe-Free-Energy-Principle-in-Mind
The beauty of collective intelligence, explained by a developmental biologist | Michael Levin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U93x9AWeuOA
Growing Neural Cellular Automata
https://distill.pub/2020/growing-ca
Carcinisation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation
Prof. KENNETH STANLEY - Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhYGXYeMq_E
On Defining Artificial Intelligence [Pei Wang]
https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jagi-2019-0002
Why? The Purpose of the Universe [Goff]
https://amzn.to/4aEqpfm
Umwelt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umwelt
An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms [Yong]
https://amzn.to/3tzzTb7
What's it like to be a bat [Nagal]
https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Nagel_Bat.pdf
COUNTERFEIT PEOPLE. DANIEL DENNETT. (SPECIAL EDITION)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axJtywd9Tbo
We live in the infosphere [FLORIDI]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLNGvvgq3eg
Mark Zuckerberg: First Interview in the Metaverse | Lex Fridman Podcast #398
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVYrJJNdrEg
Black Mirror: Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too | Official Trailer | Netflix
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qIlCo9yqpY